Hope!

Who is insensible to the music of that word? What bosom has not kindled under its utterance? Poetry has sung of it; music has warbled it; oratory has lavished on its bewitching strains. Fled from the world, Hope, with her elastic dreams, said that when all other divinities fled from the world, Hope, with her elastic steps and radiant countenance and lustrous attire, lingered behind. Hope! Well may we personify thee, lighting up thy altar-fires in this dark world, and dropping a live coal into many desolate hearts; gladdening the sick chamber with visions of returning health; illuminating with rays, brighter than the sunbeam, the captive’s cell; crowding the broken slumbers of the soldier by his bivouac-fire with pictures of his sunny home and his own joyous return. Hope! Drying the tear on the cheek of woe! As the black clouds of sorrow break and fall to the earth, arching the d descending drops with thine own beauteous rainbow! Aye, more, standing with thy lamp in thy hand by the gloomy realms of Hades, kindling thy torch at Nature’s funeral pile, and opening vistas through the gates of glory! If Hope, even with reference to present and infinite things, be an emotion so joyous- if uninspired poetry can sing so sweetly of its delights, what must be the believer’s hope, the hope which has God for its object and Heaven its consummation?
- John McDuff

Hope is a narrow valve between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities.

We strive in vain to look beyond the heights.

We cry aloud- and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry.

From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word.

But in the night of death Hope sees a star, and listening Love can hear the fine rustling of a wing.

He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, “I am better now.

Let us believe, in spite of doubts and fears, that these dear words are true of all the countless dead.
- Robert G. Ingersoll,
At his brother’s grave, June 2, 1879